Adrian Jenkins

I watched this with my 4-year-old daughter yesterday. The verdict? Not as bad as it could have been. Will Smith is Will Smith, but he could have been worse (well, except for his singing - how is it that his voice is so weak?). Jafar and Aladdin are played perfunctorially by their respective actors (whose names I neither know nor care about). Nothing special, but not terrible. The big loss here is Jasmine. Her voice is incredible, and her acting is strong. However, her character is pretty lame. Gone is the Jasmine who seeks only freedom. Say hello to the girlstrong Jasmine, who wants to be sultan to fulfill such grandiose wishes as...helping her people! The whole thing falls flat, given that we’re told she hasn’t even seen her people in years. All in all, this would be worth a budget theater viewing, if such things still exist. Or, perhaps, wait for it in video. I can’t give it a thumbs down; it is watchable, but that’s about it.

I had hoped for a more American Gladiators experience. Titan Games does offer head-to-head competition, which is a plus over the “race the clock” or “beat the course” of Ninja Warriors. But the events seem to be poorly selected, and the competitors are hardly the “everyday people” promised by the teasers of weeks before. The women events looked particularly bad. We had a fitness model, as well as some roided up power lifters. The men’s events looked better, but not much. The one possible high point of the show, an athlete with a prosthetic leg, was dampened due to the fact that he was absolutely destroyed by his competition. Further, had he managed to win, I can’t see how he would have possibly done the final part of the course. Oddly, we heard almost nothing about him. In a show with as much “human interest” padding as Titan Games had, we saw nothing about the person who triumphed over losing a limb. The show might have potential, but it needs work, and I don’t know how “everyday people” could ever compete with the current crop of seeming roiders that we have now. Finally, I couldn’t get over the fact that the final test for the Titans was Mt. Olympus. In fact, the Titans didn’t live there; their abode was Mt. Othrys. Maybe the Olympians will be the everyday people?